Residences (e.g., houses and/or apartments) typically include a number of energy consumption devices such as, for instance, appliances (e.g., washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, etc.), among other examples. Residences may also include a number of energy generators, such as, for instance, photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, etc., among other examples. These energy generating devices can be used to cover fully or partially the energy demand from the energy consumption devices.
Scheduling the operation (e.g., adjusting and/or delaying the start times) of residential energy consumption devices can reduce the energy (e.g., electricity) costs of a residence. Scheduling the operation of such residential energy consumption devices, however, can be difficult, complex, and/or time consuming due to the large number of such devices typically included in a residence and/or the length of the horizon time for which the operation of the devices may need to be scheduled. As such, previous approaches for scheduling the operation of residential energy consumption devices may be costly, time consuming, and/or use a large amount of computational resources. For instance, the time and/or computational resources needed by previous approaches to schedule the operation of residential energy consumption devices may increase exponentially with the number of the devices.